1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical assembly, and, more particularly, to a nonlinear optical assembly of an alert light.
2. Description of the Related Art
As having the advantages of being compact in size, low-power-consuming, and durable, light-emitting diodes (LED) have gradually replaced conventional light bulbs to become one of the major lighting sources, and have been extensively applied to all sorts of lighting applications and alert lights.
As far as the composition of a conventional LED alert light is concerned, the conventional LED alert light includes an LED module and an optical lens module. Depending on the number of LED in the LED module, the optical lens module is integrally formed with multiple lens units. The lens units are sequentially aligned in the form of a straight line. A light entrance end of each lens unit corresponds to an LED of the LED module to thereby constitute an LED alert light.
Although the conventional LED alert light can be applied to products with alert features, the optical lens module of the conventional LED alert light employs multiple integrally-formed lens units, and under the constraint of forming technique, each lens unit of the optical lens module takes the form of a cone with a cone apex angle approximately at 120 degrees. The conical shape of the lens units makes the integrally-formed optical lens module inflexible for significant changes and hard to adapt to the requirements of different forms of light projection. As a result, conventional alert lights can be designed to provide single-side straight-line light projection but fail to provide arced, wavy or annular light projection in response to the demand of diversified alert lights.
In spite of attempts of manufacturers in the related field to integrally form arcuate, wavy or annular optical assemblies, forming those nonlinear optical assemblies is a tough job to tackle. Thus, the molding and manufacturing requirements of the optical assemblies are rather high, rendering light projected therefrom non-uniform.
Moreover, concerns of light entering and exiting the nonlinear optical assemblies differ from those of linear optical assemblies. In view of different curvatures for nonlinear and linear optical assemblies, uniform light projected by the light exit portions of the nonlinear optical assemblies should be prioritized. However, corresponding in-depth development on conventional nonlinear optical assemblies is not available and the resulting uniformity of light exiting therefrom is not satisfactory.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,712,931, US 2006/0082999, and US 2011/0194279 involve linear optical assemblies. The present invention differs from the foregoing citations and further explores more different embodiments in continuation with the development of the nonlinear optical assembly of an alert light.